To the list of less-than-savory individuals who support Ron Paul's presidential campaign, you can now add a brothel owner. Since Paul's libertarian political views allow for legalized prostitution, he has won the endorsement of Dennis Hof, owner of the (in)famous Bunny Ranch in Nevada. Hof has pledged to place a donation box for Paul outside the door of his brothel.
Without a doubt, Paul's libertarian acceptance of legal prostitution shouldn't be construed as personal condonement of the practice, nor should he be judged by his supporters. A slightly more interesting question, however, is will he accept donations from the owner and patrons of a brothel?
This Sunday finds us celebrating the First Sunday of Advent, that liturgical season of preparation and penitential reflection inaugurating a new church year. We often times forget that Advent was historically a penitential season: Many churches have abandoned the drab blue vestments for the more regal purple; Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent with festive rose vestments and joyful propers ("Gaudete in Domino semper," from the Introit) is M.I.A. since the spirit of Vatican II blew through town. No less, we many times leave the contemplative Mary out of our advental picture until Christmas Eve, when we picture the young mother wrapping her newborn in swaddling clothes, complete with ox and ass feeding on hay.
Over the past few days, First Things has hosted an excellent exchange on mariology and what the Mother of God means for Catholics and Evangelicals who are committed to substantive ecumenical dialogue. Today's post, by Matthew Levering, co-editor of Ave Maria University's theological journal Nova et Vera, discusses the centuries-old debate on Christ's "brothers and sisters": Certainly if the Messiah did have brothers and sisters the whole conception that there was no conception after His own would be placed in limbo. Noting that it was not until the fourth century that a theologian proposed that the "brothers and sisters" mentioned in the Gospel were born of Mary, Levering suggests that our exegesis of the relevant Gospel passages should be read with one eye to the text and the other to the guidance of the Holy Spirit as evidenced in the Church Father's rejection of a multiple-mother Mary.
It is Cornelius Plantinga's entry, however, that I found most instructive for reflection on how we ought to celebrate Advent.
Once more God chooses "what is weak in the world to shame the strong" (1 Cor. 1:27). Contrary to conventional wisdom, Mary isn't blessed just because her womb bears Jesus and her breasts nurse him. She's blessed because she "hears the world of God and obeys it" (Luke 11:27-28). Moreover, she places herself in "God's own household" as "a servant of the Lord," and then, in her Magnificat, prophesies of the mighty acts of God in her, and among the generations, and in Israel, and everywhere the covenant with Abraham extends. She speaks politically, and she does so, as C. S. Lewis put it, "with a terrible gladness." The topic of the Magnificat is, once more, the kingdom of God and the revolutionary mercy and justice churning within it.
Advent is God coming to man, but ad + venere, "motion toward" + "to come," most certainly should apply to all of us as we prepare to meet the God Who assumed human flesh so as to suffer death and bring redemption. Like Mary, we too may be blessed as we hear, contemplate, and obey the Word; we too may move closer to Him, just as the lowly servant Mary came closer to God that "cold winter's night" so long ago.
He's just terrible, even when -- which is often, once he's off the subject of the war -- I agree with him. His voice is too high, he can't remember who the Kurds are, and he often comes off like a crazy old man in a bus station.
But that's good news, in a way. Paul's doing better than anyone expected. It's abundantly clear that he's not doing it on charisma and rhetorical skill. Which means that libertarian ideas are actually appealing, since Ron Paul isn't. Paul's flaws as a vessel for those ideas prove the ideas' appeal. If they sell with him as the pitchman, they must be really resonating. I suspect Paul himself would agree with this analysis. Er, except maybe the bus station part.
Just imagine a dashing, smooth-talking candidate with Ron Paul's ideas. What would be the poll numbers then?
Last week when I was home for Thanksgiving, I caught a report on the Philly CBS affiliate about what is apparently a new trend in holiday gift giving: gift registries. This hybrid of children's Christmas lists and wedding registries, where adults register their holiday gift desires at places like MyRegistry.com and then share those registries with their friends, certainly cuts down on the "deadweight loss" of unwanted gifts. But what are we to make of the etiquette of these things? A welcome innovation? Tacky and presumptuous? Discuss.
One of the more troubling developments in the 2008 presidential election has been the assumption by ignorant media elites that Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani somehow means something. Here's just a brief a sampling of big media reactions (emphasis added at parts):
FoxNews: "The endorsement is a coup for the Giuliani campaign, especially after opponent Mitt Romney recently racked up two major endorsements from social conservatives."
NYT Politics Blog: "The televangelist Pat Robertson endorsed Rudolph W. Giuliani today at the National Press Club in Washington, providing the former New York City Mayor with a big symbolic boost as he tries to allay the concerns of Christian conservatives about his candidacy. . . Make no mistake - this is a coup for Mr. Giuliani's campaign."
washingpost.com's Politics Blog: "Pat Robertson, one of the most influential figures in the social conservative movement, announced his support for Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid this morning at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. . . provides Giuliani with a major boost as the former New York City mayor seeks to convince social conservatives that, despite his positions supporting abortion rights and gay rights, he is an acceptable choice as the GOP nominee. . . The endorsement will definitely slow Romney's momentum with social conservatives. . . Robertson is widely viewed as one of the pillars of the religious right."
Writing in National Review Online, Brad Wilcox of the University of Virginia and Jon Shields of the University of Colorado argue the Robertson endorsement means little:
One problem with this view is that it assumes Robertson has a rank and file to lead. Robertson's endorsement might have meant something ten years ago when he sat atop a thriving Christian Coalition. Today his endorsement means almost nothing because the Coalition has collapsed.
This reality dawned on Republican Party elites after the relatively poor turnout of evangelicals in 2000 caused President Bush to lose the popular vote. So in 2004, Republicans did not lean on Christian Right organizations to get out the evangelical voter. . .
Indeed, Giuliani's reported glee over Robertson's endorsement reflects a profound failure to appreciate the new realities of Republican-party politics. Old-line leaders like Robertson now have little sway among ordinary social conservatives, many of whom have become disillusioned with a party that seems largely indifferent to their deepest concerns. So, even if Giuliani succeeds in getting most leaders on the religious right to support him in a general election match-up with Hillary Clinton, his candidacy is not likely to ignite the social conservative base in ways that enabled Bush to triumph in 2004.
For most of my time covering presidential elections, I shared the view that there was a direct correlation between the skills needed to be a great candidate and a great president. The chaotic and demanding requirements of running for president, I felt, were a perfect test for the toughest job in the world.
But now I think I was wrong. The "campaigner equals leader" formula that inspired me and so many others in the news media is flawed.
This leads to the astounding conclusion, "We should examine a candidate's public record and full life as opposed to his or her campaign performance." And I mean 'astounding' in that something so obvious only comes as the result of a mea culpa for a 20-year career. Its incredible the press corps ever lost sight of this in the first place.
Halperin points to Richard Ben Cramer's 1988 book What It Takes as providing the justification for judging candidates based upon campaign skills. Kevin Drum thinks the narrative is older:
Perhaps it's this: in the older books, the fact that presidential candidates had to survive an ungodly gauntlet of scrutiny and rubber chicken banquets was reported as a fact of life, but it was (again, to my recollection) mostly reported as an unfortunate fact of life. As in, "How unfortunate that some of the people best suited to be president will never have a chance because they aren't suited to the preposterous rigors of modern campaigning." Maybe after 20 years of this, Cramer provided the press for the first time with a rationalization for its part in this destruction test: don't think of it as unfortunate, think of it as necessary. By making a mountain out of every molehill, reporters are actually providing a stern test that eliminates weaklings who shouldn't be trusted to have their fingers on the button.
Perhaps. But regardless of whether this is true, it's merely a rationalization. Contemporary campaigns may be even more grueling than they were a few decades ago -- thanks to modern technology, longer primary seasons, and a bigger press corps -- but I doubt that What It Takes is really responsible for the media's current fascination with personality and horserace journalism. That's always been there.
I think Drum lets the press corps off too easily. It's not just that they've come to cheer on the horserace. They are now the jockeys, whipping the candidates into jumping over more and more ridiculous hurdles.
The inanity of modern campaigns has much to do with the foibles of members of the press. After all, they've helped create the modern media environment through their biases. And I don't mean political or ideological biases, though they have plenty of those. But much more decisive are their biases toward laziness and stupidity.
Consider one story from Marc Ambinder's article in the December 2007 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, "Teacher and Apprentice":
Here, Obama's novelty worked against him. The national press corps places tremendous importance on consistency with an established narrative. Lacking a basis to judge Obama's neophyte foreign-policy views, reporters were much more willing than they otherwise might have been to accept the Clinton campaign's charge that Obama's answer was naive. They weren't nearly as willing to accept the countercharge from the Obama campaign that Clinton had herself flip-flopped in answering the question (earlier in the year, while criticizing Bush's recalcitrance about meeting with rogue leaders, she had expressed practically the same sentiment as Obama), because such a slip-up didn't track with the emerging campaign narrative of Clinton as disciplined and savvy. Nor could Obama's campaign deploy, as Clinton's did, an army of surrogates to flood the airwaves and drive home the point. In August, Obama told a reporter that under no circumstances would he use a nuclear weapon to destroy terrorist bunkers in Afghanistan or Pakistan. The Clinton campaign again pressed the charges of inexperience. A year earlier, as it turned out, Clinton had said essentially the same thing as Obama in response to Bush administration posturing about nuclear weapons. But reporters largely ignored this fact, because it wasn't in character for Clinton to mess up. (p 62) [emphasis added]
Here we see the press corps completely swallowed up by gamesmanship. The story went beyond merely ignoring the substance of the policies in question. It went beyond mere speculation on campaign savvy. The story was about how reporters became an echo chamber for the Clinton campaign's lies.
And this is when members of the press aren't actively trying to make up the narrative. Consider how much worse it is that we let newsreaders with enormous egos 'moderate' the debates. Matthew Yglesias explains the tedium of Enemy #1: Tim Russert. The whole charade is maddening -- and a large part of why I ignore almost all campaign reporting. The only worse things are 1) that the median voter has even lower standards than reporters and 2) the low quality of candidates themselves.
Few relationships in life are more important than marriage. And as I've written here before, it is precisely for that reason that I feel the state should stay away from marriage. For an institution so important (and so rooted in religious faiths) it should not be left to the whims of a secular democracy. I think this is partially why beloved Christian author C.S. Lewis wrote the following:
There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.
Roughly 1.5 years ago, in response to the movie Kingdom of Heaven, I posted this article relating to the crusades. Yesterday I posted the exact same article in light of the first crusade's anniversary. The varying responses are interesting, and lead me to wonder what effect prior comments within a post have on subsequent ones. Food for thought.
On this day in 1095, Pope Urban II officially commenced the First Crusade by issuing his Edict to take back Jerusalem from the infidel. The eastern emperor had appealed to Urban II for help against the Turks, and although eastern Christians distrusted the French who made up the first crusaders, the emperor had no choice but to accept the help. Thus began Christian Europe's first great expansion across the sea.
People have a tendency to assign moral values to historical events, and with the Crusades it's almost always bad. And why not? When the first Crusaders entered Jerusalem they killed every Muslim - including women and children - and burned the Jews alive in synagogues, where they had fled for safety. When Raymond of Aguilers visited the Temple it's reported that corpses and blood reached his knees. Some Crusaders, such as the Frankish army of the Second Crusade, even slaughtered fellow Christians. In their case, the Coptic Christians of the Nile. During the Fourth Crusade the Franks, joined by Venetians, sacked Constantinople, the seat of Eastern Christianity. They even put a French prostitute on the throne to entertain them. Of course the brunt was spared for Jews and Muslims who, as alluded to already, suffered horrible atrocities.
But if I may engage in a bit of moral relativism, it would be unfair to view the Crusaders outside of their historical contemporaries. As Urban II pointed out in drumming up support for the First Crusade, Syria, Egypt and North Africa were all Christian before savage attacks from raiding Muslim armies. And Palestine had seen its fair share of savage wars from Seljuks, the Fatimid dynasty and countless others. Thirty years before the First Crusade, a pilgrimage of 7,000 Germans set out for the Holy Land, but only 2,000 returned safely, thanks to the Fatimids. The Crusaders were not unique in their savagery, only in their organizational ability to get it done.
Middle Age warriors were, typically, brutal. But in them we can see a faint glimmer of our modern self awareness. Our understanding of society and the individual certainly has its roots in the Crusaders. Take these random lines from Sir Steven Runciman's History of the Crusaders:
"[Queen Melisande's] action was regarded as perfectly constitutional and was endorsed by the council."
"Trial by peers was an essential feature of Frankish custom."
"The King ranked with his tenant-in-chief as primus inter pares, their president but not their master."
In the Crusaders we see a flickering, unmistakable light of the modern West. Godfrey of Bouillon was elected supreme ruler of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, but he declined the title of "king" because he would not wear a crown of gold were Christ had worn a crown of thorns. He was also sure to give the state a constitution.
My point is that the Crusaders were generally ignorant and cruel, but they also carried seeds of a powerful philosophy. This philosophy was not merely order, but also faith, homage, fealty, duty, rights, inheritances, and honor. The feudal society - so at odds with modern equality - can obscure the complex gems within it. And if I may engage in a bit of moral relativism again, the Fatimids and others had nothing like this to compare. Saladin was a rare exception to what were typically lawless despots. The Saracens had no real polity.
Looking back at the Crusades it is hard to recognize anything of ourselves in those warriors. Their scientific and religious understanding was limited and their loyalty sometimes fickle. The ancient Knights Templar, of which I am a member, would at times serve their own pockets instead of the church and pilgrims. But let us at least acknowledge they formed the seeds of modernity in the West. The Crusaders are our kin, and as such we should remember both their sins and victories.
Tyler Cowen has a crazy idea for eliminating the deadweight loss of Christmas, "Buy someone a book of stamps. It has the efficiency properties of a cash transfer (who doesn't need stamps?), yet if you choose an attractive issue it will show (a little) more thought than money alone." (link not in original)
I can't help but think of the beginning of Suspicion, when Cary Grant pays for part of his train fare with a stamp.
Scripture tells us in many places that we are to give thanks to the Lord for his blessings to us, for indeed, all good things come from Him. It is meet to set apart this day as a day of thanksgiving and to express our gratitude for the prosperity we enjoy, a level of material comfort that would have astounded the Pilgrims -- and continues to astound the majority of the modern world.
Unfortunately, I think this richness obscures the true meaning of thanksgiving. We look at our wealth and comfort and conclude that these are the only things worthy of gratitude. Worse, we consider that these are the only ways that God will bless us, that His will should conform to our own.
It is hard to tell our rich culture that God blesses His people with trials, hardships, and suffering. Even doubt and worry are gifts from God. It is hard to discern how such things are for our benefit, or why God would answer our prayers with outcomes that contradict our wishes. It confounds the wisdom of men that the unseen benefits of suffering are often unknown and sometimes unknowable until the Last Day. But surely, Scripture tells us that this is so.
In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul explains the spiritual benefits of suffering (5:2b-5):
And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
Likewise, St. Peter writes in his first epistle (1:3-7):
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade -- kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith -- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire -- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
It is dangerous to ignore suffering or to pretend as if it is not from God -- or worse, a sign of His displeasure. Instead, we are to rejoice in it, for it is a blessing, one as worthy of our thanksgiving as the material comforts we celebrate today. The danger is increased if we praise God only for these material comforts, as if our relationship with Him were based upon Him pleasing us as we see fit. Even if subconsciously, this attitude elevates us above Him, and woe to such thankful people indeed.
How glorious that not all blessings are either material or terrible, for we can set our hearts and minds on his ultimate blessing, the forgiveness of our sins, and give our deepest thanks.
Two Thanksgivings ago the New York Times ran an op-ed by Professor James E. McWilliams on the first Thanksgiving. According to McWilliams, the Pilgrims found the Native American food "exceedingly filthy and most execrable" and the holiday's strong association with food was an invention arising out of the mid-19th century. McWilliams' attack on our traditional view of history is a fashionable sport in academia. When such historical revisions are accurate, it's important for us to amend our understanding of certain events. On the other hand, undermining long-held beliefs of history is such a guaranteed attention-grabber that some will stretch the truth in order to make waves. Or, worse, they'll do it to conform with a differing worldview.
But Jim Lindgren of the Volokh Conpiracy fisks the piece and McWilliams' evidence to argue that the Pilgrims actually liked the food they shared with the Native Americans and that from the beginning the holiday has been associated with food and thanksgiving. Indeed, Lindgren implies that nearly all of the stereotypical views we have of that first thanksgiving holiday are well founded.
When my friends gathered for Thanksgiving dinner in college, we would often deliver remarks inspired by Peter Marshall's The Light and the Glory. Click the link below to read them.
On the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims were brimming over with gratitude - not only to the ninety Indians who had surprisingly joined them, but to their God. In Him they had trusted, and He had honored their obedience beyond their dreams. So, Governor Bradford declared a day of public Thanksgiving, to be held in October.
Because of the unexpectedly high numbers in attendance, the Pilgrims prayed that they'd be able to feed such a large crowd without cutting too deeply into their winter food supply. As it turned out, the Indians did not arrive empty-handed. The Indian chief had commanded his braves to hunt for the occasion, and they arrived with no less than five dressed deer, and more than a dozen fat wild turkeys! [Present the turkey.]
The Indians helped with the preparations, teaching the Pilgrim women how to make hoecakes and a tasty pudding out of cornmeal and maple syrup. [Present cornbread and other such stuff.] Then they showed them an Indian delicacy: how to roast corn kernels in an earthen pot until they popped into something fluffy and white. It was the first popcorn ever eaten by Westerners. [Present popcorn.]
The Pilgrims in turn provided many vegetables from their household gardens: carrots, onions, turnips, parsnips, cucumbers, radishes, beets, and cabbages. Also, using some of their precious flour, they took summer fruits which the Indians had dried and introduced them to the likes of blueberry, apple, and cherry pie. [Present pie.] It was all washed down with sweet wine made from the wild grapes. [Present alcohol.]
If you're like me and you're still trying to sort out who's your candidate for 2008, check out this little quiz sent along by my brother. Answer the 11 questions on the hot-button issues of the day, and how strongly you feel your answers, and the computer will match you up with the best candidate.
I took the test several times and, much to my surprise, my most frequent #1 and #2 matches were Mike Huckabee and John McCain, respectively. I could live with a Huckabee-McCain ticket, though I'm not sure John McCain could.
Third place rotated between Ron Paul, Fred Thompson, and--gasp--John Edwards.
Jonah Goldberg's latest column in the Los Angeles Times is my recommended "must read" of the week; it aptly and succinctly dissects both the 2008 presidential race and the state of "mainstream" conservatism. Well done Mr. Goldberg.
Update: The National Review editors have also issued an editorial strongly critical of Huckabee. I think this also hits the mark, though it lacks a bit of the flair which Goldberg uses.
For his part, Huckabee apologist Joe Carter is trying to play cleanup by name-calling the editorial "embarassing" and arguing that Huckabee's hardly different than Mitt Romney, NR's preferred candidate. He also argues we can't yet judge Huckabee because he "hasn't yet released his full policy agenda", though this doesn't prevent Carter from subsequently examining Huckabee's record and policy positions - precisely what NR has done. At any rate, I think it says something about the state of affairs in the GOP when "Guess Who Mitt" is the standard by which others are judged.
The purloined lightbulbs bear stickers stating that they were subsidized by utilities, such as Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and Southern California Edison, so they're easy to recognize. The utilities bought and distributed the free lightbulbs with money from Californians' electricity bills to try to save energy throughout the state. Now the utilities expect to get energy savings from only about 80 percent of the bulbs.
So if you didn't know, when you give things away for free, people might re-sell them on eBay. (See also: time value of money.)
If PG&E really wanted Californians to consume less energy, they should charge them more, like through some kind of peak pricing scheme. Oh wait!
After 25 years, The Federalist Society is optimistic. As they should be. From an organizational vantage, the Society is thriving: With nearly 40,000 members nation-wide and a staff of more than twenty, "growth" is the keyword. And the recent Lawyer's Convention was a great success. More than 400 attended, and Thursday's gala dinner at Union Station brought 1,600 together to hear the thoughts of President Bush, Justices Alito, Scalia, and Thomas, not to mention the always convivial Ed Meese. I was fortunate enough to attend this year's events, representing the Indiana University School of Law at Indianapolis' student chapter.
While none of the proceedings during the three-day Convention held at the Mayflower Hotel were as sensational as ABSCAM, all went a long way in fostering a greater marketplace of ideas. Beyond the narrow point of any given lecture or panel, a reoccurring issue was the increasingly distorted role of judicial nomination hearings that has occurred over the past three decades. Noting that he occupies Justice White's old chambers, Justice Thomas marveled that White was nominated, confirmed, and took his seat on the court in a ten-day period. Ten days. On Thursday night Bush held up the Roberts' hearings as a case in point of how the hearings have become something of monster. Near the end of his address on Friday, tough guy Rudy plainly stated that members of the Senate should have the same courage the nominees display in holding their professional (and sometimes personal) lives out for scrutiny: Forget the rhetorical questions, end the threats of filibuster, and put the nominee on the calender for a fair up or down vote. At Saturday's luncheon lecture Mitch McConnell wondered what will happen with nominations should 2008 favor the Democrats. Holding back a wide grin, he reminded us that the "old guys" he works with have a hard time forgetting new tricks, like filibustering a nomination vote.
Foreign cinema must be superlative if it wants to attract the attention of Americans. The new Russian film 1612 may be such a movie, and not just because of the spectacular cinematography one can see in the trailer. It is ostensibly a movie about the Time of Troubles, a chaotic interregnum in Russian history, and the expulsion of the Poles from Moscow on November 4, 1612.
Coincidentally, Russia recently moved its national holiday to the 4th from November 7th, the former date being a commemoration of the Bolshevik Revolution. The new date is more timely, and not just because it is the closest available date onto which the holiday could be heaped. The Kremlin commissioned the movie to help explain the switch, but they have been characteristically unsubtle in pointing out that there are powerful parallels between modern Russia and the Time of Troubles, parallels they are keen to exploit.
After the end of the Rurik Dynasty in 1598, Russia fell into disorder, just as it did after the fall of the Soviet Union. The weak state became prey to intrusive Western powers, only to be saved by the rise of a new Russian strongman. (Can you guess who the modern day equivalent is?) It may be somewhat disconcerting that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth stands in for the United States. The former were forced out of Moscow by a popular uprising -- just what will our comeuppance be?
The film depicts the Poles as ferocious warriors and the dominant military power (dare one say, a superpower). The winged plumage of the hussars is especially striking, which brings me to what I'd actually like to talk about: Indiana University Football!
Yesterday, the IU Hoosiers capped off their first winning season since 1994 with a close win over rival Purdue University in the 83rd Old Oaken Bucket game. In many ways, this was a tribute to the late Coach Terry Hoeppner, who sadly is not here to witness the triumph of a team he rebuilt after many dismal, losing seasons. Among the many changes Hoeppner made was the institution of some novel traditions (pardon the oxymoron), like The Walk and Defending the Rock. Now that the Hoosiers appear poised to go to their first Bowl in 14 years, I think it might be time for a new one, one inspired by 1612.
IU Professor of Folklore Eugene Eoyang has lobbied (perhaps facetiously) to introduce a mascot based upon one of the most tenuous etymologies of Hoosier, i.e., that we are named after the fearsome European cavalry units called Hussars. He's described how inspiring a crimson warrior on a white charger would be, but I believe he had the 18th-Century version in mind. Even though Europeans didn't set foot in Indiana until 1679, I think a winged hussar from the early 17th-Century, like those in 1612, riding around Memorial Stadium would be pretty friggin' cool. And now that the Football team have climbed their way into bowl contention, I think they deserve the panache.
Or as Thomas Frank might say, "what's the matter with Cleveland?"
As I mentioned in my cheap housing in the Rust Belt story last week, Cleveland is ground zero for foreclosed housing and the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States. Ten percent of the city's houses stand vacant. Four of the top 21 zip codes for foreclosure are in the Cleveland metro area, including first place 44105. How did this happen?
This week, Money magazine told us how. Blame Rust Belt economics and the population drain in part, but also predatory lending practices, such as "toxic ARMs," that put people in houses they had no business buying. Banks apparently have a lot of clout in the Ohio legislature, and have blocked reform and regulation efforts. Certainly no one wants to be denied "a chance to own the 'American Dream,'" (in Cleveland?), but sometimes people need to hear "no" for their own good.
In news sure to warm Zach's heart, Kiplinger's is reporting that gift cards will fly off store shelves this holiday season. Merchants are expecting to do $30 billion in the gift card business this year, a 15 percent increase over holiday season 2006. Retailers are looking at creative ways to get consumers to use their cards more quickly this year, such as by adding 5 or 10 percent to a card's value if it is used before December 31st, because they can't claim gift cards in their revenue until they are used. If consumers use their cards in December 2007 as opposed to sale season in January or February 2008, retailers can make their holidays appear merrier and brighter in their ledger books, to the joy of Wall Street.
Gift cards are expected to account for 7 percent of holiday gift spending this year.
Students whose names begin with C or D get lower grades than those whose names begin with A or B; major league baseball players whose first or last names began with K (the strikeout-signifying letter) are significantly more likely to strike out . . . .
The researchers' work supports a series of studies published since 2002 that have found the "name-letter effect" causes people to make life choices based on names that resemble their own. Those studies by Brett Pelham, an associate professor of psychology at SUNY University at Buffalo, have found that people are disproportionately likely to live in states or cities resembling their names, have careers that resemble their names and even marry those whose surnames begin with the same letter as their own.
Perhaps this study, above all else, should drive parents' decisions in naming their children.
Members of the Writers Guild of America aren't the only ones striking this month. According to the New York Times, four Columbia University students completed their first week of a hunger strike to protest "an eclectic hodgepodge of two sets of demands." Armed with laptop computers, lamps, a water heater, music speakers, a Facebook page, text-message updates and shelter at the nearby Malcolm X lounge, these fearless crusaders are demanding that the school move the curriculum "away from a focus on the achievements of dead, white, European men."
Update: Zach alerts me to this NRO Corner post which highlights a creative counter-protest called "Why We Act, Why We Eat..." In support of them, I will eat a large chunk of red meat today, and you should do the same.
Splitting Political Hairs, or, Just How Crazy is Ron Paul?
I'll confess that I don't pay much attention to policy proposals from candidates. For one thing, it's too early in the campaign for them to be decisive, and for another, I'm simply more interested in the principles, rather than the platforms, upon which the candidates stand. Who matches my priors? This year, the closest candidate is Ron Paul.
Which is not to say that he is the perfect candidate. Most plainly, I disagree with him on immigration. But at a deeper level, Paul has picked up from the libertarians the principle that one should make the perfect the enemy of the good. This makes it difficult to operate in politics. Half-measures or even engagement with 'rational articulation' are, to some libertarians, acts of betrayal. This is the filter between Paul's attractive first principles and his unappealing, some say 'crazy,' policies.
When I picked up a Ron Paul flier (PDF) from the GOP table at the North Carolina State Fair, I was disappointed. I expected that he would sell himself on his first principles, even broadly defined. Instead, he has a list of policies that would turn off the casual voter or attract the wrong supporters.
One could take apart most of these and find something reasonable underneath them. The most puzzling one to me was objections to free trade agreements, since Paul is no protectionist. Clamouring to get out of NAFTA seems like a step in the wrong direction. The purported excuse is that these agreements are "managed trade," rather than true free trade. That sounds like a meaningless distinction to me, since we get either NAFTA or nothing. Still one could make the case that these deals are superfluous. Indeed, most free trade economists insist that there's nothing wrong with unilateral trade reform; we should rejoice if American consumers buy cheaper, even subsidized, goods and foreigners, often poor, receive our dollars. It is as plain as that. The multilateral deals we go through are unnecessary extravagances, or, as Clive Crook put it in the October issue of the Atlantic Monthly last year, a lie:
There are short-term adjustment costs to consider, but the case for free trade that you read about in economics textbooks is the case for unilateral free trade. The real mystery is why complex rounds of reciprocal trade-policy promises — "We'll concede this if you concede that" — should ever have been necessary in the first place.
The standard answer is politics . . .To face [down opposition], governments have to build opposing coalitions of winners — classically, exporters seeking lower trade barriers overseas. Starting in the 1940s, this is how successive rounds of trade talks worked. And they really did work. Again and again, the export interest defeated the protectionist interest, and trade surged. Few would deny [ ] every participating nation benefited greatly.
It was a fruitful lie, this idea that the gains from trade come mainly from the exports you sell, not the imports you buy. But it was still a lie; the textbook case for free trade really is correct.
The interesting question is, Why has the lie stopped working? It may be that governments have just become more stupid about trade. Perhaps they've forgotten that the whole process — the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the World Trade Organization, all that stuff — was just a ruse.
Considering the recent stall in trade talks, Crook concludes that unilateral lowering of trade barriers is the only way forward. Paul agrees, and throws in constitutional, sovereignty, and rent-seeking issues to boot. The case for opposition to trade organizations is reasonable . . . but politically inviable. And without an explanation, misleading.
On other issues, its harder to give Paul cover. One can hold, correctly, that the UN is a corrupt, ineffectual body hostile to our interests and has the capacity to erode our national sovereignty, but it is a leap too long to conclude that we should withdrawal. One can hold that the income tax creates inefficiencies and that the national government could make do with less revenue, but the path to such a smaller government does not run through the abolition of the IRS. One can hold that we should return to a gold standard, but the argument, as explained by Jason Kuznicki, is more complicated than Paul makes it out to be. In these and other areas, we keep running into that filter.
The most salient critique of Paul is the credence he gives to conspiracy theories about threats to national sovereignty. Again, I'd say sensitivity to such threats is principled and reasonable. Actually believing the stuff full tilt, though, reveals that he's looking in the wrong places for his information and lacks the willingness or capacity to critically examine it. We should expect more from a sitting Congressman; and while most Congressmen may be similarly disinformed on a whole host of more important issues, not every one of them is running for President.
Ron Paul is not crazy. On first principles, I agree with him quite a lot, and so I'm willing to overlook his policies. I'm disappointed that he, like many libertarians, makes the perfect the enemy of the good. This is the most unreasonable thing about him. When his policies do come up, they distract from his first principles, and so make him a less influential figure. Decades of public life have conditioned him to suspect the worst out of international agreements, and as a consequence, he takes mainstream conspiracy theories too seriously. But for all that, there are more conventional ways of being a lunatic -- and most of the other candidates have found them.
And -- as the above-cited efforts to compel Congress to actually adhere to the Constitution demonstrate -- few people have been as vigorous in defense of Constitutional principles as those principles have been mangled and trampled upon by this administration while most of our establishment stood by meekly. That's just true.
Paul's efforts in that regard may be "odd" in the sense that virtually nobody else seemed to care all that much about systematic unconstitutional actions, but that hardly makes him a "weirdo." Sometimes -- as the debate over the Iraq War should have demonstrated once and for all -- the actual "fruitcake" positions are the ones that are held by the people who are welcome in our most respectable institutions and magazines, both conservative and liberal . . .
This whole concept of singling out and labelling as "weirdos" and "fruitcakes" political figures because they espouse views that are held only by a small number of people is nothing more than an attempt to discredit someone without having to do the work to engage their arguments. It's actually a tactic right out of the seventh grade cafeteria. It's just a slothful mechanism for enforcing norms.
Whatever will happen when people who are paid to entertain the public head into a public relations war against corporate suits represented by lawyers? Limited media exposure.
Nevertheless, when people start to miss their favourite TV shows, they will ultimately blame the studios, not the strikers. It doesn't take much to see that the writers have legitimate complaints and make for much more sympathetic strikers than, say, NYC transit workers. And unlike the UAW, writers are not fighting with their management over an ever-shrinking pie -- just the opposite. Corporate recalcitrance seems hard to justify, and I've not seen a good argument on their behalf.
Another remarkable difference between this strike and those in recent memory is that the WGA is a collective of the creative class. Blue collar workers simply matter less in today's economy. Alex Tabarrok's brother, a movie producer, writes:
...unlike in most other unionized industries, it's the INDIVIDUAL members of the unions in the entertainment industry that the management / owners want to work with . . . there are specific individuals who the studios want to be writing their TV shows and screenplays. It doesn't matter if Joe or John or Mary is stacking the boxes, flipping the burgers or ringing the cash registers so management can easily hire a non-union member to do the same job, in the film business we need to work with specific individuals who happen to be union members.
I meant to post this yesterday but got distracted by other chores. My local newspaper published this well-known poem and I was reminded of its moving message:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
It was three years ago today that InTheAgora.com (ITA) posted its first true entries. After the first day's posts, co-founder Paul Musgrave described his goals for the site, which echoed my own:
I want this to be a blog that challenges conventional opinion, both mainstream and rightwing, while offering new and thought-provoking perspectives on issues international, domestic, and apolitical. I've long thought that paying too much attention to politics drains the interest from the rest of life--Drudge and blogs can turn the news into an addiction not unlike heroin, where we're all craving the next scandal so we can get another punditry fix. But there are topics in life that aren't political, at least to a first approximation. I find it's productive to talk about--or at least contemplate--those topics every once in a while.
Initially, I can't say I stayed true to this mission statement. The hollow world of political punditry was an addiction that was hard to break. My old personal blog had climbed to the top tier of many blog lists, in part because I had mastered the hollow art of engaging others in the "echo chamber" of blog punditry. But as is true in so many facets of life, popularity and quality can be inversely proportional. I craved something more substantive.
This was my hope in creating ITA and, to my immense pleasure, I believe we have achieved that. Often we receive recognition and hat tips from national journalists and pundits, but unlike many fellow websites, I don't think that rat race drives this blog. The real joy - at least for me - is that I continue to learn and grow, both intellectually and spiritually, from ITA's contributors and readers. That I can share my own perspective along the way is an added bonus.
Thanks to everyone who's been a part of ITA's first three years. I look forward to the ride ahead.
The biggest political news this week was not some crusty old religious fart endorsing a social liberal for president. No, it was that on Monday, Ron Paul broke the record for the largest single fundraising day for any Republican, totalling $4.3 million. This is remarkable in many ways, not the least of which is that it shows tremendous vitality in a second-tier candidate for the nomination. I also think Kevin Drum hits upon a significant explanation when he says that the feat is "a function of (a) the growth of the internet as a political money machine and (b) the curious but well-known fact that technophiles are disproportionately libertarian." There are other thought-provoking explanations, but overall, reaction to the news has been fairly predictable. And yet, those reactions may be just as revealing as the feat itself.
The national media are going through the motions of having to first explain who this guy is and why someone so mild-mannered has such fervent supporters. Regardless of his positions, I think the media are naturally reluctant to give lip service to Paul because they are predisposed to focus on events instead of issues and celebrity instead of obscurity. The fundraising roused them from somnambulant pursuit of the front-runners, but the impression is that they'd rather go back to sleep (that goes for you, too, Huckabee). I look forward to the Paul candidacy transitioning from a curiosity to an influential factor in the campaign, even if the MSM drag their feet.
It's no surprise that liberals turn up their noses. Drum calls him a 'fruitcake' and demands that the media start to scrutinize his positions, especially at the debates. The subtext here is that Paul will fall apart under such scrutiny, but he's shown in the past that he can articulate a fairly good explanation of his policies (some libertarians wish he could be a bit better). The real problem isn't that Paul is, as Drum snidely accuses, a lunatic, but that he holds positions that liberals don't agree with. In essence, Drum's challenge is thinly-veiled name-calling, one that he wouldn't get away with if he were more openly attacking libertarianism.
If we want to debate issues on first principles, Radley Balko shows why the liberals ought not have the upper hand:
Why do candidates who propose abolishing federal agencies get painted as fringe wackjobs, while candidates who propose we create multiple new ones are viewed as inspiring visionaries?
Candidate A says, "This cabinet-level federal agency isn't working, and hasn't in the 30 years of its existence, despite an ever-increasing budget. Let's abolish it and save the taxpayers money." Candidate B says, "This cabinet-level federal agency isn't working, and hasn't in the 30 years of its existence, despite an ever-increasing budget. Let's spend more money on it!"
Candidate A is invariably painted as a nut, while candidate B, who's parroting ol' Al Einstein's very definition of insanity, is cast as the clear-thinking, optimistic guy with all the good ideas.
This approach sounds great in general terms, but voters tend to reject specific plans to dismantle the government. This unfortunate fact has driven the GOP to abandon all small government platforms that threaten their retention of power. Oh, it's fine if you want to say you like small government, but if you, like Paul, actually believe it, the establishment will turn against you. The GOP's reaction to Nov. 5th was hostility and irritation.
This exposes the hollowness of today's party. As Daniel Larison points out, this is a party that reveres Ronald Reagan but despises the one candidate closest to Reagan. I offer that this is because Reagan is now honored not for his Conservatism but his successfulness, the only principle the modern GOP recognizes. (Don't tell them that Reagan was a goldbug, too.) In another post, Larison laments this abandonment of principle at greater length:
Stop for a moment and think about the claim that Paul is "too far outside the party, ideologically speaking," and reflect on how bizarre that is. I'm not saying it isn't a correct assessment about the party, but it is a remarkable transformation (or rather deformation) that has taken place in the last decade . . .
Social conservative, economic conservative, populist, libertarian -- you would think that he has something for all of them, and ought to be winning support from most factions of the party. Of course, the war trumps everything and drives these potential supporters away, and so we have the strange spectacle of possibly having a pro-abortion social liberal as the nominee while imposing a litmus test on whether we should perpetuate an aggressive war and occupation of another country. The endless pursuit of the "real" conservative candidate continually disappoints voters, because they seem intent on ignoring the one candidate who actually agrees with conservatives on everything where modern conservatives don't radically abuse the Constitution (particularly relating to war and civil liberties).
The most striking thing about Larison's list is that Paul is a strange amalgam of "authentic" conservatisms -- and this is sincere, not strategy. And yet, it works in just the opposite of what Larison expects. Glenn Greenwald describes Paul's politics:
So there is at least something in Paul's worldview for most people to strongly dislike, even hate, if they are so inclined. Yet that apparent political liability is really what accounts for the passion his campaign is generating: it is a campaign that defies and despises conventional and deeply entrenched Beltway assumptions about our political discourse and about what kind of country this is supposed to be.
While Barack Obama toys with the rhetoric of challenging conventional wisdom, Paul's campaign -- for better or worse -- actually does so, and does so in an extremely serious, thoughtful and coherent way. And there are a lot of people who, more than any specific policy positions, are hungry for a political movement which operates outside of our rotted political establishment and which fearlessly rejects its pieties, even if they disagree with some or even many of its particulars.
The right wing establishment also hates those supporters. In a further sign of their hollowness, the GOP loyalists portray all Paul's people as crazies, cryptoliberals, apostates, and partycrashers -- anything but principled conservatives looking for a principled candidate. But in the identity-group world of Republicanism, principled = unelectable.
The irony here is that the party buffoons are alienating the coalition they must depend upon to achieve any sort of electoral victory. As David Weigel asks, "Are Republicans flying so high that they can just amputate a wing of their party? Obviously not. So why are they doing it?" Their behaviour is a testament to their self-delusion. They seem not to realize just how rent the base is, just how objectionable the front runners are, and just how offensive the insults to Paul and his supporters are.
The November 5th feat was the most dramatic display of Paul's support to date, and the Republican establishment decided the proper response was ever greater nastiness. It's highly likely that many of those supporters will leave the party next election, some of them for good.
This Money Magazine list of the top 25 towns with affordable housing is interesting for what it doesn't say almost as much for what it does. In browsing the list, it appears half the towns are either in Ohio or upstate New York, and the three Pennsylvania towns in the top 10 are all in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. The average house prices on the list are in the $85k-$95k range, and in only three towns are the prices over $100,000.
The list doesn't tell us why houses in these towns are so cheap, but we can take some good guesses. While the OH-PA-NY Great Lakes region isn't hemorrhaging workers like it was in the 1970s and 1980s, population growth is still generally negative. Cleveland, Ohio, the BBC reported this week, is the sub-prime mortgage capital of the United States, and its environs are blighted with foreclosed and abandoned buildings (hat tip). Likewise, Buffalo and Pittsburgh have large stocks of vacant housing (Buffalo is #2 in the nation, according to Wikipedia). While it's somewhat unfair for these cities to stand in for the entire region, the fact that the majority of the towns on Money's list are clustered in three states has to say something. It's classic economics really, low demand for houses due to fleeing population plus surplus housing stock (to say nothing of the quality) equals low home prices.
Nevertheless, I've always imagined Buffalo and Pittsburgh to be nice places to live, if you can stand the weather and can find a decent paying job. And that latter caveat is the catch.
Evangelical Outpost's Joe Carter calls Christians to task for not forcefully condemning waterboarding and other torture practices in the current political climate. He writes, "we have remained silent and treated an issue once considered unthinkable--the acceptability of torture--like a concept worthy of honest debate. But there is no room for debate: torture is immoral and should be clearly and forcefully denounced. We continue to shame ourselves and our Creator by refusing to speak out against such outrages to human dignity." Amen and Amen. Unfortunately, the comments below Joe's post indicate how much more this message still needs to be preached.
Enemy of Womens' Choice and Equal Justice Nominated
President Bush has nominated Mary Ann Glendon to be the new ambassador to the Holy See. Glendon, the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, is on the Editorial Board of First Things and has published extensively on the issues of abortion, jurisprudence, and the legal recognition of homosexual relationships. In addition, Glendon served on Bush's Council on Bioethics and was appointed to the Pontifical Academy on Social Sciences by John Paul II in 1994. In many ways her 1987 book, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law, set Glendon apart in her treatment of the legal and social dimensions of abortion and family law in contemporary society.
While her appointment comes on the tail-end of the Bush administration, I believe her contributions to the pro-life movement and bioethics will benefit the continuing discussions between the United States and the world's smallest nation on the moral propriety of the Iraq war, imposition of the death penalty, embryonic stem-cell research, and abortion.
Gisele Bundchen, the world's top supermodel, is dating the New England Patriots star quarterback Tom Brady. But despite her close association with the Patriots - about American of a team mascot as you can get - she's decided to dump the U.S. dollar and will only accept other currency.
The Wall Street Journal has an article today looking over the evidence casting doubt on the assertion that our extended Daylight Saving Time season actually saved any energy. It also reports that there's no set date for the Department of Energy to issue an evaluation of the policy, as required by the statute. I can't wait.
Meanwhile, Doug Masson found one article that explains at length why DST results in no actual energy savings; interesting that a county reporter from Wisconsin can come up with a more thoughtful critique of a policy than two co-sponsoring congressmen. He also found a story about a German study showing that our internal body clocks don't fully adjust to the switch.
UPDATE: It seems that as our extended DST comes to a close, more and more people are noticing that it wasn't worth the effort. Free Exchange nods to the emerging consensus. They also link to a New York Times op-ed by anti-DST scourge Michael Downing, who claims that daylight saving is really just a sop to a few interested industries, like the candy lobby.
While speaking at the uber-liberal Wellesley College, Hillary Clinton's alma mater, Clinton invoked victimhood and attempted to play on her unique femininity as a reason for women to vote for her: "In so many ways, this all-women's college prepared me to compete in the all-boys club of presidential politics." Barack Obama responds:
"I am assuming and I hope that Sen. Clinton wants to be treated like everybody else. When we had a debate back in Iowa awhile back, we spent I think the first 15 minutes of the debate hitting me on various foreign policy issues. And I didn't come out and say: 'Look, I'm being hit on because I look different from the rest of the folks on the stage'. I assumed it was because there were real policy differences there, and I think that has to be the attitude that all of us take. We're not running for the president of the city council. We're running for the presidency of the United States."
Clinton took a bit of a beating at the last debate, and as Reuters reports, Obama was quick to note her reaction:
Obama noted on Friday that Clinton is widely viewed as a tough figure in national politics.
"So it doesn't make sense for her, after having run that way for eight months, the first time that people start challenging her point of view, that suddenly she backs off and says: 'Don't pick on me'," he said.
"That is not obviously how we would expect her to operate if she were president."
We've covered the seeming irrationality of gift-giving at length, but the deadweight loss of Halloween has escaped my attention until this year. Kevin Hassett notes that treats are gifts and the inefficiency of this kind of giving should surely be high. This rests on the supposition that if trick-or-treaters were given all the money their neighbors had spent on candy, they would purchase a different set of candy than what they received -- and that the received set is inferior. Hassett asserts that up to 75% of received treats are undesirable; at $2.1 billion in candy sales, that adds up.
I am skeptical of this view for several reasons, not the least of which is that I think the 75% figure is wildly over-estimated. Trick-or-treating represents a special case of gift-giving.
In more traditional forms, critics of the deadweight theory say that the real value of a gift is not in the amount one would potentially pay for it but in the sentimental attachment. I'd say this is both true and false for trick-or-treating.
Gift-giving on Halloween is as much about the activity as the reward. Collecting candy, even sub-par candy, is more enjoyable than collecting money. In many ways, children derive more utility from candy than money (as Tyler Cowen points out, in-kind transfers can be more efficient than cash gifts, especially for the young). The unpredictability, the anticipation, and the physical act of hauling around loot all contribute to the nonprice value of trick-or-treating. Collecting money would be much less exciting.
A second way that sentiment adds value is due to the relationship between the giver and recipient. It strains credulity that something like this is happening in trick-or-treating. A child will not value that nasty bit of candy he collected just because it came from a kindly neighbor. In the first place, it is unlikely that the child would know even a small fraction of his (adult) neighbors well, and in the second, it is even less likely he would be able to keep track of what candy came from which house.
But doesn't this argue more strongly for a deadweight loss? No, because it lowers the cost of departing with an undesired piece. An unwanted or undervalued Christmas gift is hard to get rid of: it must be exchanged, returned, sold, or donated -- and its absence has to be explained. Children probably are not good at any of these things, as they do not have cars and are bad liars (which raises the question of just how easy it will be for them to spend the money Hassett wants them to have). How do children shed unwanted candy? This is where the real utility of candy comes into play.
Perhaps I am biased because I had lots of siblings, but bartering was a huge post-collection activity in my childhood. Supposing children have a large enough secondary market, unwanted candy can be exchanged until a new, more efficient distribution emerges. This market can last for weeks, prolonging the additional enjoyment children derive from this activity. I also think this is a good way to teach the young about economics.
Finally, another usual argument against the deadweight loss theory seems especially apt here. Children may be exposed to novel types of candy they normally wouldn't buy for themselves; these strange artifacts contribute value in anticipation and, potentially, in discovery of yet another favourite.
All that being said, we can make a solid public policy out of never buying Necco wafers, since no one enjoys them, not even the dog, and feeding Necco wafers to children and dogs is cruel.
This Sunday finds us celebrating the First Sunday of Advent, that liturgical season of preparation and penitential reflection inaugurating a new church year. We often times forget that Advent was historically a penitential season: Many churches have abandoned the drab blue vestments for the more regal purple; 
Middle Age warriors were, typically, brutal. But in them we can see a faint glimmer of our modern self awareness. Our understanding of society and the individual certainly has its roots in the Crusaders. Take these random lines from Sir Steven Runciman's History of the Crusaders:
After 25 years, 
